Conan the Guardian

by Roland Green

  The House of Charof was the lowest level of the Watchhouse, named after the ancient Argossean god of death. It was normally reserved for criminals condemned to death, but enough gold had changed hands to secure Conan a place there.

  Which was not altogether inappropriate, Akimos decided. The Cimmerian was doomed, even if his fate would be less public than that of a murderer or traitor. But it would be no less certain. Not even his thews— yes, and his wits—could let him pass the gates, the guards, and the other traps waiting in the path from the House of Charof.

  Argos had seen the last of Conan of Cimmeria, save as a body to be found on a suitable midden-pit. After the rumour of his scandalous bedding of Lady Livia was spread about the streets like the dung of stray dogs.

  Instead of drinking or shouting, Akimos went quietly downstairs to Skiron’s chambers in the cellar. He did not approach the door, let alone knock, for the sounds from within were unmistakable.

  A man and a woman, grappling in frenzied lust. Or at least frenzied in the woman. It was hard to tell from the sounds how Skiron was going about this coupling. Clearly he was not one of those sorcerers who required celibacy to work—and indeed, such were most commonly women.

  Akimos turned away, smiling. Another time would do for speaking with Skiron. The merchant prince had told the sorcerer many times over how important it was that the Flowers of Desire potion should do its work. His whole plan for Lady Doris hung upon it. So who could blame the sorcerer for testing the potion?

  Fireflies glowed in the twilight-hued garden, and beyond the garden wall the lamplighters were at work. The western sky was turning purple, and from the waterfront the songs and music of wineshop revelry floated up on a soft breeze.

  The evening would have been perfect for Lady Livia had she not been alone on the roof of the Damaos palace. She would not say, even to herself, “If Conan was here beside me.” But he was not as absent from her thoughts as he was from the house.

  Tears blurred her eyes as she thought of all that splendid strength and shrewdness locked in a Watchhouse cell. A cell in the House of Charof, too—old family friends among the Guardians had been able to tell her that much at least.

  She had asked more, but learned nothing. Nothing, that is, save that it would not be wise to be too curious about Captain Conan. One man had told her this in plain words. Others had merely looked away, but she needed no words to know what they had to be thinking.

  She did not care if all of Argos whispered that she and Conan were lovers. Nay, if they shouted it from the rooftops and to the ships at sea! She would not let Conan languish, let alone die, if there was anything she could do to save him.

  But what? She could not force from her mind the notion that Reza might have something to do with Conan’s arrest. His jealousy of her favour. toward the Cimmerian was as plain as his nose. Had that jealousy led him to treason?

  And if it had, what hope did she have of bringing him to punishment? Sergeant Talouf and the others of Conan’s men had sworn to follow Reza. Perhaps they trusted him. Perhaps they only refused to divide the forces of House Damaos in the face of an enemy.

  If so, they were wise. She would be wise, too, if she followed their lead. But then, anything she did to save Conan, Reza could turn aside!

  She gripped the stone until her knuckles were white. She bit her lip until it bled, and finally let the tears that blurred her eyes overflow onto her cheeks.

  When her eyes at last were dry, she rang for a servant. The maid Gisela appeared.

  “Wine, Gisela.”

  “A jug or a cup?”

  “Who are you, to tell me how much I shall drink?”

  “My lady. A cup often sharpens the wits. A jug always blunts them. Do not all of us need our wits about us now?”

  Livia had to smile. Had Livia’s mother not died when she was born, she might have a sister just Gisela’s age.

  “You sound as if you have said this before.”

  “I have been arguing with Vandar.”

  “Only arguing?”

  Gisela did not blush. “When we have nothing else at hand.” She lowered her eyes. “That is not as often as I could wish. But I understand. He will be slow, healing from his brother’s death. They were not only born at one birth, they have never been apart until now.”

  Livia’s eyes threatened to overflow again. “He will have vengeance for his brother’s death. We will all have vengeance.” She struck the tile underfoot. “By this House and all the years it has stood, I swear it!”

  “The gods grant it,” Gisela said. “And—a jug or a cup?”

  “A jug, but bring two cups and stay with me. Perhaps if we both sharpen our wits, we can begin that vengeance. ’ ’

  The spy hurried toward the door of the wine cellar. One hand was pressed to his stomach, as if it ached. In truth, the bag of Akimos’s gold inside his tunic would cure many aches, if he lived to spend it.

  To do that, he had to be free of House Damaos. That might have been written in letters of fire. It certainly was written on Reza’s face. The big Iranistani had been asking too many questions. When he began to find answers he would not be long in finding the spy.

  Some seemed to doubt Reza’s loyalty. Jealous of the Cimmerian, they said. He might not want House Damaos overthrown, but if he could have the Cimmerian out of the way and save it by himself—?

  The spy would have laughed, if his throat had not been too dry and his breath too scant. Reza would shed the last drop of his blood in defence of his mistress, though Conan made her Queen of Cimmeria! Indeed, he would be all the more ready to shed the blood of anyone he suspected, to prove that loyalty.

  The wine cellar door opened easily to the spy’s key. He scurried from shadow to shadow, hiding behind the largest barrels when he could find no shadow. A few paces at a time, the wall he sought grew closer. The floor underfoot grew sticky, where the blood and fire-wine from the battle had not yet been scoured from the stones. One more dash of a dozen paces, and he would be at the door to the caves. He fumbled in his pocket for the key that opened the inner lock.

  As his hand closed on the key, an iron grip closed on his wrist. The grip tightened, and now two hands held him, one by the wrist, one by the neck of his tunic.

  The hands spun him around, so savagely that his tunic ripped. That did not matter. Reza shifted his grip to the spy’s hair and held him for a moment, their noses almost touching. The spy’s feet dangled in the air, and he felt an awful urge to foul himself.

  Before that urge mastered him, he felt Reza shifting his grip again. One giant hand held his neck, as if he had been a kitten. The other gripped his belt. Then two powerful arms whipped the spy in a half-circle, driving his head against a stone pillar.

  He was dead before he could feel more fear. Reza dropped the corpse and wiped his hands on its clothing. He really wanted to take a complete bath, scrubbing his skin until it was red. Nothing else would take the memory of touching such filth from him.

  But that could wait. Only he and the gods knew it, but House Damaos had just taken its first vengeance against its enemies.

  XII

  In the night, sorcery stalked House Lokhri and its mistress.

  It was not mighty sorcery. In some lands, even so poverty-stricken a House as House Lokhri would have a sorcerer, to whom besting Skiron’s spells would have been child’s play.

  But this was Argos, where any kind of sorcery was barely a memory and great sorcery not even that. Had Lady Doris searched the land, from the Rabirian Mountains to the Western Sea, she could not have found anyone fit to meet Skiron.

  It was a small achievement, but a real one. Skiron had made himself the greatest sorcerer Argos had known in generations. Now his talents, such as they were, turned upon House Lokhri.

  Lady Doris awoke in an empty bed from a dream in which she had been reliving her bed-sharing with Captain Conan. Now there was a man worth any ten others she had known!

  No, make that any three. Doubtless the Cimmerian
was not made of iron, but of flesh and blood, which could be pressed only so far. But his could be pressed farther than most—and she would give much to have his flesh pressing hers again, his weight spreading her while she wrapped arms and legs about him and tried to make that weight still heavier—

  A scream shrilled from the outer chambers. Doris sprang from the bed, her bed robe slipping from her shoulders as she did. Ignoring her nudity, she padded to the door.

  She had no time or need to open the door. It flew open, the lock bursting like a rotten fruit, the hinges twisting like snakes. It struck her, flinging her to the floor, half dazed, aching, and frightened. Then anger came to join the other sensations and in part drive them out.

  “Guards! To your mistress!”

  She thanked the gods for Conan’s shrewdness in defeating her men without crippling or killing them. If she knew who had healed them so skilfully, she would also thank the gods for that man’s skills. Between Conan and the healer, her House was still fit to defend itself.

  The reply was another scream, then laughter. Deep, mocking laughter—if a great shark could laugh, it might sound like this. Doris tried to stand, but her legs and wind betrayed her. Writhing on the floor, she sought to cover herself with her hands.

  A third scream. It came from the outer chamber, where the maid on night duty was writhing in the grip of something vast and invisible. She was also losing her garments, a shred at a time, and beginning to twist in unmistakable desire.

  By the time the maid was nude, her head was thrown back, her eyes were closed, and her mouth open. She seemed to be embracing the empty air. Doris stared, desire beginning to boil up in her so hot and quick that it drove out the fear. If that invisible presence was fit—

  The maid let out a final shriek and collapsed on the floor. Doris now found the strength to rise, then held herself upright by gripping the door frame. The metal of the lock was hot to the touch, and she smelled smoke as well as the musk of the maid’s ecstasy.

  Then her eyes fell on the maid’s face. Where the skin had been young and fresh, now it was wrinkled. Even as Doris watched, the wrinkles deepened. Youth and freshness fled, and the dry wrinkled greyness of age took its place. As blood trickled from her mouth, age spread over the maid’s face, then crawled steadily down her body. Doris wanted to turn away, but her eyes had a will of their own. They remained fixed on the maid’s body until it was the gaunt remnant of the fair young woman she had been.

  Then Doris tried to scream and spew at once, for the nightmare was not done. Now the maid’s body went past age into the grave, and from the grave to a mouldering thing that was half dust, half hideous blood-hued ichor. The dust blew into Doris’s face, reeking of the grave, and she knelt while her stomach rebelled. The dreadful miasma of the ichor rode in on the heels of the dust, and Doris felt all her senses reeling.

  She knelt by the door, trying to empty a stomach already empty, clawing at the rug, whimpering like a small trapped animal. She did not see two vast yellow eyes open in mid-air, and a black mist flow and dance around the eyes. She did not see the mist flow forward, until its foremost wisps were playing over her bare skin.

  Then she felt their touch, cold as death itself and smelling worse than anything that had gone before. She did not feel the touch long, for her mind could bear only so much. As Lady Doris plunged down into the refuge of senselessness, the terrible mocking laugh echoed around the chambers again.

  Conan sat on the bench that was one-third of the furnishings of his cell. The other two-thirds were a straw pallet and a large bucket that did duty as a jakes.

  The Cimmerian had been in worse prisons, and indeed he had hardly expected one as good as this. It was his experience that men who had only days before they met the executioner seldom enjoyed lavish hospitality.

  The food and drink were also adequate. The drink was only water, but it was clean enough and almost fresh, not half solid with living green scum. The food was a porridge of barley and beans, with a few thumb-sized bits of meat hiding in it. The meat was at least good enough for dogs.

  Conan had eaten his noon meal of the prison fare, but some time later the promised basket from House Damaos came. Lady Livia must have turned out her larder, for the guard could barely lift the basket. Wine, cheese, sausage, flat bread and long bread, raisins and apples, even a jug of ale—if he was here for less than five days, he would hardly need the prison fare again.

  Bread and cheese were all he’d wanted at first, but he knew that he had to keep his strength up. Lady Livia might have ways of bringing him out of here peacefully, but he would not wager much on that, certainly not his life. So he pulled out one of the sausages and cut off a piece.

  As he did, he saw two things. One was a rat peering out from a crack at the base of the rear wall. The other was a thin slit in the other end of the sausage.

  Conan had no love for rats, but this one was a sorry creature indeed, grey, slow-moving, and gaunt. It would have run from a mouse, let alone a cat.

  “Very well,” the Cimmerian said. “Never let it be said that I turned away a beggar when I had food to spare. ’ ’ He cut off a small slice from the slit end of the sausage and tossed it to the rat.

  The rat could move fast when it saw food. It seemed to snatch the sausage out of the air. Three bites and it was gone. The rat sniffed at the floor, as if hoping for more. Conan started cutting another piece.

  Then the rat squealed as if it were being roasted alive. It rolled over on its side, then on its back, drawing its thin legs up to its matted belly. It writhed and twisted, while foam flecked with green drooled from its mouth. Its eyes seemed to glare with knowledge no mortal creature should have, then closed. A moment later it went limp.

  “The gods rot them!”

  The trail of that basket led through so many hands that now the gods only knew whose had poisoned the sausage. Nor did Conan expect to learn, if the poisoner lay within this prison.

  But if the poisoner was under Livia’s roof, then Conan vowed to ferret out his secret and end his life.

  Most folk in Messantia would have been surprised that Lord Harphos did not run screaming from his mother’s house at the first whiff of sorcery. Even those who knew there was more to Harphos than met the eye would not have expected his night’s work.

  Harphos was fortunate to be awake and in his private chamber. He was a long way from the heart of Skiron’s attack, and ready to meet it when it spread through the house.

  His knowledge as a healer included no spell-working. Old Kyros who had taught him made it clear that he would teach Harphos no such thing. “Not without your mother’s consent, and maybe not even with it.”

  “No fear, Master. She would throw a fit, and perhaps more.”

  “In some matters your mother may be wiser than she realizes.”

  Now, wise or not, his mother was in danger, and it was Harphos’s place to use the knowledge she had forbidden him to defend her. If he could not defend her, he could at least defend House Lokhri and avenge his mother.

  So Harphos made two plugs of herbs that would trap wind-born or spell-cast poisons and thrust them into his nostrils. He made an infusion of more herbs and soaked a scarf in them, then drew it across his mouth. He drew on an iron-studded belt and a purse with an iron lock, and in the purse put two stoppered vials. One would fight off any drowsiness the magic might send. The second would give him strength perhaps matching Conan’s for half an hour or so.

  As an afterthought, Harphos thrust a short sword into his belt. He did not expect to face human enemies tonight. But if by chance he did and they were not in too great strength, they would have a disagreeable surprise.

  So girded for battle, Harphos ascended the stairs to his mother’s chamber. On the way he saw no one who was not senseless, and some who were surely dead, dying, or mad. He could only hope that the wits of the mad could be restored once the spells left the house.

  As he climbed the stairs, fear gnawed in his belly like a wolf at a rabbit.
At his mother’s broken door, the fear turned into something solid, cold as ice, and so large that it seemed to press outward in all directions. He subdued his bowels and his stomach and stepped within.

  It was not, he thought afterward, the fear-binding spell Skiron had left behind that finally broke him. It was the sight of what was left of the maid, the reek of her death—and the image Skiron left floating in the doorway to Lady Doris’s bedchamber.

  Harphos took one look at the spike-studded black arms wrapping themselves around his mother and cried out. Then he turned and ran.

  He did not remember leaving the house, or plunging through the streets faster than he had ever run before. He could not indeed have run faster if he had taken both vials. His hands writhed, his eyes stared, and those who prowled and preyed by night gave way before him, because they thought him a madman.

  Indeed, he did not remember anything until he found himself clawing at the gate of the Damaos palace. A moment later he found himself facing Conan’s Sergeant Talouf.

  “What in the name of Erlik—?”

  “This—this isn’t—gods’—work,” Harphos gasped. He gripped the bars of the gate as if loosening his grip for a moment would cast him down into the mouth of a volcano. “Sorcery. Sorcery at—our house.”

  Talouf had his wits about him. The gate slid open— Harphos noticed how silently it moved, compared with the rusty monster at the Lokhri palace—and guards surrounded Harphos. Some gave him water, others gave him shoulders to lean on. All in time led him up to the house, where Lady Livia waited.

  She sat on silk cushions in a chair of carved ivory, and her face was the same hue as the ivory. So was her night shift. It revealed more of her fair body than Harphos had ever dreamed of seeing, but otherwise might have been armour. Certainly her eyes were as cold as steel—and they grew no warmer as Harphos finished his tale.

  “You fled, then?” she said. A judge condemning a man to the impaling stake might have spoken more kindly.